Amaechi at the police barricade: A witness account by Sam Omatseye Dusk amassed over the old GRA in Port Harcourt, but it preceded a darkness more profound and virulent. I was in a bus in a convoy of the Rivers State governor along with speakers of state houses of assembly across the country from 1979. One hundred and two of them rode in the convoy. It had been a grueling day, and my mission was to assess for myself the average day of Governor Rotimi Amaechi amidst the turmoil of today’s politics. The theatre has taken its toll on a discomfited nation. Jonathan versus Amaechi. Dame Jonathan versus Amaechi. Northern governors had visited Amaechi and hoodlums threw stones and cracked windows. APC versus PDP. New PDP versus PDP. State assembly imbroglio with an upstart and subversive minority soiling the dignity of a quorum by attempting to oust the legitimate speaker. Kidnap of a cleric. Reports of a city losing its halcyon ego to the barbarities of militants when Amaechi took office. I visited to understand how Port Harcourt, Rivers State and its governor held their own against this brimstone. The things I saw I did not prepare for. I did not know the governor had invited former speakers, he being an alumnus. I wanted to see if he still governed and how, or was I going to write in this column about paralysis in Rivers State? Once I arrived, I was poised to observe. So I joined the convoy at a model primary school. That tour took us several hours through his marquee projects from the morning until our return to the city and to another development I did not expect: the blockade at dusk. After spending a whole day hopping off and on the bus, climbing, walking, standing, taking notes, propounding questions, interrogating answers, studying the body language of the governor, and interacting with the right honourables, the last anyone expected was a blockade by the police. It began when the whole convoy made a precipitous stop at an interception. Initially, I chalked it up to a few snafus like a security breach by an unguarded civilian. But when it tarried, the reporter in me woke up, and I left the bus and walked about 50 metres to the front of the convoy. Then I learned that the police had sealed off the road, the governor’s favourite entrance to the Government House. I also learned that the New PDP secretariat was located on that road and it had been sealed off earlier on a court order. So, I wondered aloud, if you seal off a building, what has that got to do with the road? The road did not only accommodate the secretariat, but also residences of many private persons, including some expatriates, who were seen walking through the barricade having abandoned their vehicles. It also hemmed in denizens of the Port Harcourt Club and, more importantly, the state’s general hospital known as Braithwaite Memorial Specialist Hospital, and I wondered what happened in the case of an emergency. I walked to the barricade and I saw three police pickup vans parked end to end across the road. I saw aides of the governor trying to persuade the police officers at the post to open the road for the governor. We had spent close to 20 minutes at the spot. Suddenly, one of the police officers flared up, and said, “How can I take orders from a civilian? I cannot take orders from a civilian.” It became obvious that the men would not budge. A few minutes later, Governor Amaechi walked to the scene and since the officers recoiled from engaging him, he told a press corps, “You can see for yourselves. They don’t want me to enter the Government House on the instruction of the president and the commissioner of police.” He strode off to one of the buses and the convoy made a detour to the other entrance to the Government House. It was a frenzied evening, putting in perspective the crisis between the governor and the president. Ironically, the governor had received the president at the airport and had told me he planned to see him later in the day. I doubt if it happened. After the incident, I asked the governor if the commissioner of police had called him or if he had any conversation with him on the barricade. He said no. How come the chief security officer of the state fell in the dark about the barricade of his own road by the security forces in the state! That is the savage irony of the crisis, and all the shameless denials from the PDP offices cannot blot out what I saw. If they wanted to seal off a building, it was fine. But why the road? The military never lapsed to this primitive level. They sealed off many buildings in their draconian days, including my newspaper house. But the roads remained inviolate. Senator Olorunimbe Mamora, also an alumnus, summed it up when I spoke to him in the Government House: “It is the height of impunity and overzealousness.” Enough said.
Posted on: Tue, 17 Sep 2013 10:48:28 +0000
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